Investigators with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board look over debris at the crash site of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 on Tuesday in Bishoftu, Ethiopia. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images)

Getty

Pilots at United Airlines say that, for now, they remain convinced that they can safely fly the Boeing 737 Max.

“We are confident in our ability to fly the airplane,” said Todd Insler, master chairman of the United chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association, in an interview late Tuesday. The chapter represents United's 12,500 pilots.

It followed by five months the October 29 crash of Lion Air Flight 610, also a Boeing 737 MAX, shortly after takeoff from Jakarta. That crash killed 189 people.

Insler noted that United ALPA has analyzed data from more than 23,000 hours of flight time since the carrier put the 737 MAX 9 into service in May.

“We have a pretty robust flight safety data reporting system here at United,” he said. “We have flown 23,000 hours in the MAX 9 and not one of those thousands of data points shows [a problem] related to aircraft performance or mechanical deficiency.”

Coming after national regulators across Europe and Asia have moved to ground the 737 MAX, the United pilots' union's endorsement of the safety of the plane offers support to the U.S. Federal Administration's decision to keep it flying in the United States. Southwest Airlines pilots union also issued a statement Monday expressing their confidence in the safety of the MAX based on analysis of data from 41,000 flights. With 34 737 MAX 8s in its fleet, Southwest is the largest operator of the plane.

We’re trying not to be emotional about this. The facts, the data points at United, show why we are confident in our ability to fly this airplane.”

In an interview in November, Insler said United pilots prepare for aircraft emergencies with hours and hours of simulator training. “The first time I see an adverse event, I want to see it in a simulator, not with 300 people behind me,” he said then.

Reports indicate that the first officer on the Ethiopian flight had just 200 hours of flight time. The bare minimum number of hours for a pilot at a U.S. regional airline is 1,500 hours. In general, pilots at mainline U.S. airlines start with several thousand hours of flight time.

Insler said that if the first officer in fact had just 200 hours, “If that is true, I am outraged about it. We all should be.”